“Wh-what . . .”
In the time it took Simons to form those two croaking syllables, Mason had cracked the blunt end of his dagger against his temple to put him right back to sleep.
* * *
Simons awoke sometime later. He was groggy at first and when he tried to roll over, he couldn’t move. His next attempt was to reach for his head, but his arms were tied even tighter than his body. The only thing he could move freely was his head, and when he did that, he saw Mason sitting perched on the edge of a chair next to him.
“Are you all right?” Mason asked.
Blinking furiously, Simons wriggled and squirmed. “William? What the hell are you doing here?”
“I came by to check on you,” Mason said while looking at him with wide, concerned eyes. “I thought there might have been some trouble after that scuffle you had with Wade and—”
“Why am I tied up?” Simons roared.
Flinching at the other man’s angry tone, Mason said, “I just got here. I knocked, but nobody answered. The lock was broken, so maybe someone forced their way in.”
“Cut me loose!”
“Oh, of course.”
This time, it was Simons who flinched when he saw Mason draw the dagger from the scabbard hidden behind his back. Knotted linens had been used to tie Simons to the chair, and it was a simple matter for the sharpened blade to slice through them. When he was free, Simons hopped up from the chair and rubbed his wrists as if he’d been held captive for days instead of hours. “What’s going on here?” he asked.
“Like I said, the lock on your door was broken. When I knocked, the door opened. I heard something suspicious, so I came in. You were tied to this chair and someone was here with you.”
“Who?”
Mason shrugged before putting the knife away. “I don’t know. I barely got a look at him, but he was a muscular fellow dressed in rags. He was carrying a club.” When he reached for the scabbard again, Mason shifted so his jacket opened to reveal the Remington holstered under his arm. As soon as the blade was sheathed, he straightened his jacket to cover the weapon. Judging by the nervous expression on Simons’s face, that brief glimpse of the.44 had been received just as Mason had hoped.
“You said you came in here to . . . check on me?” Simons asked.
Pulling up the chair he’d been sitting in while waiting for Simons to wake up, Mason said, “I didn’t think you’d buy that.”
“Of course I didn’t. I’m not stupid.”
In Mason’s experience, one thing that was certain about stupid people was that they were always anxious to say they were otherwise. He played into that by nodding as if conceding a defeat. “Actually I was sent to kill you.”
Simons tensed.
Mason knew the other man didn’t have any weapons, because he’d already taken them from him while he was knocked unconscious. The instant Simons’s features betrayed his intention to lunge or make some other aggressive move, Mason brought his hand up to the holstered.44. Although most any man could touch a holster with impressive speed, drawing a gun from it and firing with any degree of accuracy was another matter entirely. Bluffing at such a skill was a dangerous play to make, but Mason thought he might be able to get away with it in his present company.
Slowly, carefully, Simons opened his hands and held them up. “All right. You got me,” he whispered.
“If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it already,” Mason said.
“Then what do you want? Money?”
“Have a seat, Randy.”
Simons took a seat, placed his hands on his knees, and then rocked back and forth while awaiting Mason’s next words.
This was the first time Mason had ever conducted an interrogation, but he guessed it would have a similar flow to a poker game. An opening move of aggression followed by a well-placed bluff. Then the pot was made juicier before the final blow was struck. Mason couldn’t help grinning at the similarities, the sight of which made Simons even more nervous.
“You’ve made some folks real upset,” Mason said.
“One of those folks is Cam Greeley.”
The color drained from Simons’s face. “Oh Lord,” he moaned. “I knew he’d come after me sooner or later.”
“Why is he after you?”
“You . . . don’t know?”
“Actually I was just sent to do a job. When I got to town, things didn’t line up to match what Greeley told me, so I got curious. Tell me how you know him.”
Leaning forward, Simons spoke at a frantic pace. Each word had the urgency of a man grasping at a dwindling length of rope before falling over the side of a sheer drop. “I brokered a few jobs for him. Nothing much really. He was looking for some help and I steered a few men in his direction. With my family . . . I know plenty of men in that line of work.”
“Which is?”
“They’re gun hands,” Simons said. Scowling, he asked, “You didn’t know?”
“I was told to kill someone and I came to do it,” Mason said in a tone that was bereft of any of the brighter emotions. He was actually doing his best to mimic what he’d heard from the overmen. “That usually doesn’t require me to ask many questions.” Although the tough act seemed to be holding up, he didn’t want to push it. In keeping with his poker mentality, now was the time to goose the pot a bit with a small strategic retreat. “I went to the Bistro to get a look at you and figure the best time to finish you off. But I could tell you weren’t the animal Greeley described. Furthermore, you seemed like a fairly decent man.”
“What did Greeley tell you?”
“That you surrounded yourself with crooked lawmen and bounty hunters,” Mason said. “You paid men to gun down any of Greeley’s overmen that might track you to Sedrich.”
Simons expelled a tired laugh and rubbed his head where Mason had hit him. “Overmen. Are they still tossing folks into the paddlewheel of that boat?”
“Last time I checked.”
“You’re not one of them. An overman, I mean. I can tell. It’s in the eyes,” Simons said while swiping his finger between his own eyes. Wincing, he brought that hand back to his temple, where a nasty mark had already formed. “I swear . . . it was you that hit me.”
Mason furrowed his brow as if he were trying to imagine such a strange possibility.
Watching Mason carefully, Simons eventually chuckled. “It was just a glimpse, really, but I swear it was a glimpse of you. I suppose getting cracked in the skull will make you see things.”
“It’s been known to happen. That man who I saw before is likely to come back. The only reason he’s not here already is probably that he figured I’d do the job I was sent to do.”
“Yeah,” Simons sighed. “Greeley doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. Just do me a favor, huh?”
“What’s that?”
“Make it quick.”
“I already told you I’m not going to kill you,” Mason insisted.
“I know how this goes. You get me to relax so I don’t make a sound or put up a fight and then you shoot me. I’ve seen it plenty of times.”
Drawing from his considerable experience in reading people, Mason doubted that very much. Simons had heard about it, perhaps, but not seen. “So, what have you been doing here?” Mason asked. “And why would Greeley want you dead?”
Simons was sweating profusely. His hands swiped at his face and neck to clear some of the larger rivulets tracing down into his shirt as he said, “I don’t know! This ain’t the first time he’s tried, though.”
“There’s got to be a reason.”
“Like I told you, I was doing work for him. Greeley wanted to hire on some enforcers for his new business venture.”
“You mean the Delta Jack?”
“This was before he got the boat. Back when he owned a saloon or two in Louisiana. He wanted to expand into other venues and needed men he could trust to be his enforcers. I guess he had some trouble with the local gunmen or maybe he just thought my kin could do a better job. A few of my cousins did jobs like that for him a few months earlier.”
“Did Greeley have your cousins kill for him?” Mason asked.
Simons started to answer that but quickly stopped himself and grimaced like a man who’d been caught in a lie. Or perhaps caught just before the lie. “My cousins are bad men. They’d tell you the same. I didn’t ask what they did for Greeley, but let’s just say men like them don’t get paid as well as they were for just saying nasty words to people. Know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“My cousins were always in trouble for something or other. They were always on the run. Always hiding. Always wanted in some territory for this and set to hang somewhere else for that. They kept in touch with their kin, though. I could get word to them and tell them where to find more work. They gave me a cut and told me they’d protect me if anyone came to try and get to them through me.”
“Sounds like a good arrangement,” Mason said.
“It was. It really was.”
“You want a drink?”
Simons waved that off. “Nah.” He took a deep breath and then said, “I don’t know how a man like Greeley got his hands on a whole boat, but he sure as hell did. When he got the Jack, he wanted men to be there to do whatever needed to be done. Some of my cousins jumped at the chance and were signed on. My kin ain’t exactly the kind to settle much of anywhere for long, though, and they started jumping ship. When they come back,” he added while leaning forward, “they told me stories about things they saw . . . things they done. Things Greeley was doing.”
Resisting the urge to lean forward as well, Mason asked, “What sort of things?”
“Killings, but not the sort them cousins of mine were used to. These were gruesome. Real bloody. Bloody enough to make bad men cringe. You know what I mean?”
Mason didn’t even want to pretend to know something like that. Keeping his face unreadable, he said, “Go on.”
“Well, it wasn’t long after my cousins jumped ship that men started coming around looking for them. Found a few of them, too.”
“Your cousins were killed?”
“Not all of ’em.” After taking less than a few seconds to reflect on that, Simons grunted and then wiped his nose with a pudgy finger on the same hand that bore his tarnished gold ring. “Eh, they would’ve been killed sooner or later. They knew it. The whole family knew it. Only thing is that Greeley started coming after me next. Ran me out of four towns in as many counties until I wound up here. As to why . . . I don’t know for certain. Could be on account of me being able to get word to the rest of my kin.” Simons grinned. “There’s still a few rotten apples in the ol’ family tree. Couldn’t blame Greeley for wanting to make sure nobody puts them onto his scent. Even with them overmen he’s got on his payroll, he’d be in for a hell of a fight.”
That explanation didn’t set well with Mason, but he would have bet that Simons was being straightforward with him. “Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”
“What do you want to know?”
Mason smirked and leaned back until his spine was flush against the chair. “I’d like to know why you’re so willing to have this talk with me, for one.”
Simons shook his head and prodded his temple some more. “If Greeley did send you to kill me, you probably already know all this. Not like it’s a big secret between me and him.”
“And if I’m not in Greeley’s pocket?”
“Then I’d want to help in any way I could to cause him grief. I’m through with that son of a bitch.”
“Is that why you’re in a town that is so close to the river?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I ain’t even really thought of it. Being near or far from the Mississippi never made much difference before, and this place is mighty comfortable. Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen. I’m done running from Cam Greeley.” Simons put on a convincingly aloof facade. He even had Mason fooled until he cowered a bit and asked, “What is gonna happen anyway?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On if I can count on you to get out of this town and stay hidden for a while.”
“I can get out,” Simons said. “Staying alive after I do is another matter.”
“I have a place you can go to that will be safe,” Mason said. “Greeley doesn’t know about it. Not many people do, actually.”
Unable to contain his enthusiasm, Simons practically sprang to the edge of his seat. “Really? Where is it?”
“First let’s get you out of Sedrich.”
“That’s the easy part!”
Mason stood up and walked to the window that gave him a view of the darkened street. In a matter of seconds, he’d found what he was looking for. “Those men that were with you at the saloon,” he said. “The ones with the guns. Were they your cousins?”
“One was an uncle. Another was a cousin. Gunmen in my family are runnin’ in short supply as of late.”
“Any chance you could get a few of them over here?”
“I doubt it,” Simons said. “Turns out they’ve been more than happy to watch my back when I was in a saloon. Apart from that, they tend to keep their heads down. It’s what they’re best at. Even if I could get word to either of ’em, they’d be useless until they slept off all the liquor they swallowed.”
“That’s a shame,” Mason said. “We could’ve used them.”
“Why?”
Mason stepped away from the window so Simons could take a look.
After peering through the glass, Simons spotted the man in tattered clothes. “Oh yeah,” he said. “That’s one of Greeley’s boys. Garza is his name. Joseph Garza. I suppose that’s the one you saw when you first come in here?”
“Yes,” Mason lied.
Simons stepped straight back from the window and said, “I can make a run for it.”
Now was the time for Mason to make the play that would allow him to sweep the pot off the table. He shook his head gravely and said, “I doubt you’d make it. There’s bound to be others. The overmen tend to run in packs.”
“You’re right about that,” Simons said. Panic grew in his eyes like a flame that was being fed a steady trickle of kerosene. “They probably got this place surrounded. Maybe my kin’s already dead. Aw, no! This is it. This is when that bastard Greeley finally makes his play. Damn it!”
Mason went to the other window, eased aside the shabby curtain hanging in front of it, and took a look out. Even though he saw nothing but shadows and a pair of half-starved cats out there, he quickly pulled the curtain back and said, “That way’s no good either.”
“More of ’em?”
Mason nodded.
“I shoulda run further away,” Simons groaned. “What was I thinkin’?”
“When I came here,” Mason said, “I thought this might happen.”
“You did?”
“Yes. I’ve done other work for Greeley, you see, and he almost always sent his hired guns to watch over me to make sure things got done right. If I just let you go, there’s a real good chance they’ll come sniffing around to double-check that the job’s really finished.”
Before Mason could stop him, Simons went to one of the small tables situated against the wall. He reached under it and pulled a.32-caliber pistol from where it had been stashed. “Guess that don’t leave no choice.”
Hiding the fact that he’d missed that gun when he searched the room earlier, Mason said, “Wait. You want to shoot your way out?”
“You gonna try and stop me?”
“If that’s the way you want to go out,” Mason said, “I could just put an end to you right now.”
Suddenly Simons squinted at him and asked the question Mason thought would have come a while ago. “Why would you want to help me anyways?”
“Because I don’t like being lied to,” Mason said. “Greeley told me you were a bloodthirsty killer and that you were planning to take the fight to him. Since I took a look around and had a word with you instead of walking up and killing you straightaway, I see that’s not the way it is.”
“My kin may be crazy,” Simons said, “but they ain’t crazy enough to go after someone like Greeley. They ain’t even any good when I need ’em now!”
“Greeley and I are about to part ways,” Mason continued. “He just doesn’t know it yet. When I decide to make that happen, it’ll do us all some good to make certain there are a few less overmen to worry about. There’s the men that are here as well as some on that boat. Now, I don’t believe I can take out all of them, but getting in close enough to Greeley to do some damage will go a long way to giving me a head start in putting him and the Delta Jack behind me.”
“You mean . . . behind us?”
“That’s right. If I play this right, I should be able to give Greeley enough to worry about that he won’t be able to come after anyone for a while. You’ll be rid of him once and for all.”
There was a mix of fear and admiration on Simons’s face when he said, “You’ve really got this all worked out.”
“A man should always have an escape route planned. I’m sure your cousins know about that sort of thing.”
“They know a lot about making a run for it. Least they did until they started getting themselves killed.”
Mason looked out the window where there was only a cat to look back at him. “You’ll need to leave this town and get somewhere far away from where Greeley might find you. I can help in that regard, but you’re going to have to help me in return.”
“Anything.”
“First we need to get you out of here, and the best way to do that is for us to get Greeley to stop looking for you.”
“How do you propose we do that?” Simons asked. “Come to him with hat in hand and say pretty please?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of making him think you’re dead.”
All the hope that had appeared on Simons’s face quickly faded away. “How do you intend to do that?”
“When I was sent here,” Mason explained, “Greeley gave me specific instructions to bring back proof that you were killed.”
“Boy, he sure don’t trust you, does he?”
“He only needs to trust me for a short while. To accomplish that, I’ll have to show him the proof he needs.”
Simons nodded expectantly. “We can do that. Shouldn’t we take care of them fellas outside, though?”
“If I get what Greeley wants, we should be able to send those overmen away without a fight.”
“Fine, but as you can see, I don’t got much for you to take.”
Nodding down toward the smaller man’s hand, Mason said, “You’ve got that ring.”
Grabbing his finger, Simons pulled as if he meant to yank his entire hand clean off the end of his arm. Even with all that force, however, the ring didn’t budge. “Just give me a minute,” he grunted. “I can . . . get it off. Used to wear this when . . . when there was less of me. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Mason said as he drew the knife from his scabbard. “I know what you mean.”
“What’s that for?”
“Greeley didn’t want just the ring.”
Simons was still tugging at the ring. When he looked down, his eyes widened. “No, no! He wants you to cut off my hand?”
“The finger will do just fine.”
Even though it was a step up from killing him, Simons didn’t seem much happier about it. He glanced toward the window and slumped into his chair. “Think I’m gonna need that drink after all.”